Mountain Lard Weekend

Over the weekend, I managed to head up to Hendersonville, NC and attend the Mountain Lard game day. It was a great games day. Even though there were some last minute cancelations, there were still four games going simultaneously for both periods. In the morning, I ran a Sharp Practice scenario based on the Horseshoe bend scenario that I had written. Though a small scenario designed for 2 players, we had three at the table. The Loyalists divided their forces. The game went rather well. Unfortunately, one of the Loyalist players had to leave mid game due to a family emergency. The Loyalists won the game when a random event set the house on fire triggering the end game event - Colonel Alston's wife forced the rebels to surrender to protect her family. The player running the Raiders had achieved their objectives and had successfully looted several buildings. They were the only unit to take no shock for the entire game.

The Loyalist advanced unobserved to start the game and nearly reached the sentries before being spotted.

The two Loyalist players (Dave P and Mark C). The one on the left, Dave P, had to leave part way through the game. (Hope everything was OK, Dave.) He commanded a unit of militia and a unit of Loyalist Raiders. The raiders as mentioned earlier were very effective.

Once spotted, the Loyalists quickly came under fire. The unit of militia took no losses but plenty of shock.

It took a while, but the main body of loyalists began to move and advanced on the house. They approached the side and took the house under fire.

Seeing an opportunity, the Rebel player decided to attempt to charge the broken militia and Loyalist Raiders in an attempt to reduce the Loyalist force morale. But did not roll well enough to leave the yard.

The risk did not pay off and the main body of Loyalists charged an destroyed the single rebel group, killing its big man. The picture is from the Facebook post from the event as I forgot to take a picture of this.

The main body of loyalists then charged the house repeatedly and took the bottom floor. Several attempts were made to run upstairs as well. A firing random event from the Rebel player led to the house catching fire which ended the game in a Loyalist victory. The house and home was lost. Here is the defeated Rebel (Allen on the left) and the victorious Loyalist (Mark on the right).

At the same time, Mark Luther was running a game of Coastal Patrol featuring Soviets against Germans. Over lunch, Mark told me that the game ended as a draw with both sides left nearly broken.

The other two games were a game of O Group with 10mm miniatures and a 1st World War game of Chain of Command in Africa (28mm). The Africa game was amazing and I really feel like I missed out playing that one.

The Chain of Command game was run by the gentleman in white.

In the afternoon, Mark and I were in the Bag the Hun game that was based on the TV show Black Sheep Squadron. I had a Japanese Shotai of three planes commanded by a top ace. The target was to shoot down a flight of two Avengers. My ace maneuvered perfectly and got on the tail of an Avenger at point blank range. He had no less than four opportunities to fire on the Avenger. He managed to lightly damage the aircraft but received engine damage in return and had to flee the battle. My other two planes were shot down pretty quickly. I think Mark lost one of his Zeros. All Corsairs and Avengers were able to exit the game. Not my best flying.

My forces before the game starts.

Things looked promising as I quickly got on an Avenger's tail. My two wingmen are still alive at this point.

No matter how much my Ace shot, I failed to strike damage on the Avenger. A Corsair (not piloted by Boyington) shot down one of my other planes and here the other is about to be killed.

After some lucky shooting by the Avenger, my ace gets engine damage and turns around to retreat.

Mark (left) commanded the other three Zeroes and the Drew M, who piloted Boyington and his wingman (right).

And our host for the game, Mark B. Fantastic job running the game and the "Emmy" dice mechanic that he added added alot of fun.

The other afternoon games were a second run of the WWI Chain of Command game, a game of What A Tanker set in Stalingrad and a game of Charlie Don't Surf (20mm minis I think). All of the games seemed like great fun. The What a Tanker game seemed to be a 10mm game.

The What a Tanker game looked like fun.

The Charlie Don't Surf game also looked like a great time.

The event host, Chad, did an amazing job pulling this together. There was a raffle that i didn't win. But everyone got a gift bag.

The next day, I met my college roommate who presented me with a gift. A big box of mostly painted 15mm Minifig Napoleonics. I was shocked with the number of figures that were there. Aparently, there was a church member at his mother's church who was a wargamer who passed away. His wife, not knowing what it was, sold it at a church rummage sale. My roommate's Mom purchased them and gave them to him thinking he might like them. Having no use for them, he gave them to me. I am still trying to sort these miniatures out and figure out what is there. In the box, there were two very old Warhammer 40k miniatures. Still in the blister Packs.

The Mountain Lard Scramble

With a goal in mind, I managed a few hours of work to get miniatures rebased for Mountain Lard. The rebasing efort went fairly well. The bases and sabots were flocked.

Once that was all dry and set, I began to work on the bases to get them to fit back in the Sabot bases. This required a good bit of trimming. In some cases, i had to cut away part of the base itself to make them fit back into the sabot. The process was rather time consuming.

Once fitted back to the sabot, most of the figures held in rather well. I am just over half way through with the rebasing effort. I am pleased with the look. The new basing has recuced the width of my troops considerably from the original penny basing. I would say the frontage is about half of the original. I have round leader sabots for the leaders giving a number on the back to identify which leader is which. Given this, here is Colonel Philip Alston's Regiment of Militia.

Actually this is larger than force as he only have a three groups of militia. I have a three more groups to finish off. Then I have to figure out basing for a "skirmish" group. I am not sure how I will handle that yet. I also am looking at what figure to use for Colonel David Fanning. I think I will just pick on of the Provincial officers that I have so he will be in a suitable red coat. And just because one can never have too many militia, I just bought another group of 12 militia off of eBay. These probably won't be ready for the game. But I am getting closer to being ready for April.